


Speak

by hickandhousewife



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5161922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hickandhousewife/pseuds/hickandhousewife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl is tired of playing games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little drabble I cooked up based on feels and lack of muse for my regular WIP. Hope you enjoy!

Daryl is lost for words.

He should say something, should properly honor the transformation of the woman before him by punctuating the brief silences between each blow of the axe as she brings it down on her husband’s head. All he can do is stare, unable to hide the revulsion in his face—not because of the gore, he’s no stranger to that, but because this moment is unfolding in front of him and it’s so raw that he feels like an intruder, like it’s not his place to be here for this. Lately he’s got a snarky comeback for everything, quickly making enemies out of even the most well-meaning members of the camp, maybe because he now feels a duty to speak for both himself and the brother he lost. The little mouse woman has rendered him speechless.

A sob catches in her throat as she misses the mark, letting the axe fall into the dirt, still slick with blood and brains. If she knows—or cares—that he’s there, she makes no mention of it. Awkwardly, she scrambles to pick it up, studying her handiwork shakily as she rises again. There’s something about her that draws him like animal magnetism, something he recognizes in the great effort she expends to breathe evenly, making herself look down at the mutilated corpse, a little tug at the corner of her lips betraying the wrong reaction.

He sees her composure slip a little as she passes the axe back to him. “Thank you,” she whispers, and her shoulders shrink a little as she turns. She’s scared of him. It’s obvious.

The uncomfortable sensations in his stomach swirl in the Georgia heat. He feels nauseous.

\--

He keeps dreaming of Cherokee roses. His mother used to pick them on the way home from the convenience store, keeping them in empty beer bottles and looking at them whenever his father got drunk and started screaming at her for something that wasn’t her fault. But they don’t remind him of his mother. He thinks of Carol, the way a sad smile spread across her face for the first time since the highway, and remembers that _he made that happen_.

They blossom over and over behind his closed eyes, filling his field of vision and disturbing him in the darkness with their muted colors. He thought they’d go away when the girl came out of the barn and the dream he’d promised her was destroyed. But even as he held her, feeling her shaking in his grasp, he found himself looking away, searching for a bottle with a wilting bloom, trying so hard to ignore the screaming from the others in the group. There were no flowers here, and as far as Carol was concerned, none would ever bloom again.

What happens next is confusing. She takes a few days, even skips the funeral, but she doesn’t take a weapon to the body. She cooks dinner for the others, her method of showing gratitude. He watches her constantly, past the point where it probably unnerves her, but she never breaks down, never quits the act and reverts back to the half-broken woman from Atlanta. Only a little while since then, and yet she seems so different, like a butterfly.

He’s already in love with her, but he doesn’t know it.

\--

Normally he has no patience for games, but he likes whatever this is that she’s doing, making her little jokes and exchanging glances with him like they’re old friends. Where did it come from? What does it mean? He doesn’t have a clue. But when she smiles now, it reaches all the way to her eyes, and that smile pleads with him. _Come out and play._ There is a freedom about her that is electric, characteristic of a woman much younger than she is. He plays along in his own way, with his own coded language. He tells her to stop, but what he really means is _maybe later._ Then it’s her turn again, as she tries to change his mind.

There are many jobs to be done around this prison, and every time Rick sets them to a new task, she always finds him, always wants to work alongside him, looks to him whenever there is some decision to be made. He doesn’t see himself as a leader, so he always defers to Rick, but there is something he likes about being needed. It’s like being with Merle again.

\--

He finds Rick laying on the floor in a dark hallway, trembling, pale, muttering to himself like the crack head in withdrawal that he helped Merle rob once in an alleyway in Atlanta. He bends down, but he keeps his distance, because these days Rick’s only interaction with the others has been to scream at them, to lash out, then steal away in search of isolation again.

He can hear it now, soft and wet: “I should’ve said it. Thought we had more time. Should’ve said it, Lori, should’ve said it. I’m so sorry.” Rick is crying, like he has been for two days. He sits up, acknowledging the presence of another body next to him as he moves but staring right past Daryl, saying nothing to his friend, looking at something that only he can see.

Daryl opens his mouth to speak, but he’s getting that feeling again, like he’s a voyeur. He stands up, checking automatically for walkers, and drapes the strap of his bow around his shoulder when he is satisfied that Rick is safe here, safe for now, as safe as Daryl can make him. He knows he should leave—hell, this is weirding him out, he wants to leave—but he’s rooted to the spot. _Should’ve said what?_ He’s puzzled by it. _What are you so sorry about?_

\--

He’s been running his whole life. His father’s house never felt like home, and neither has anything they’ve stayed in since the world went to shit. He’s starting to learn the ins and outs of the prison, but it remains what it is: a prison. Being in there makes him nervous, so he volunteers to go on supply run after supply run until Rick just stops asking and assumes. There’s nothing like climbing on his brother’s bike and being free out on the open road.

He’s scoping out an abandoned campsite when a walker sneaks up on him. Usually he can hear them, but he was too focused on the prospect of some canned yams to go with the rabbit in his bag, and he failed to use his senses properly. He stumbles backward, landing on his back before he’s able to aim his bow properly, but the arrow sinks into the soft flesh of the walker’s forehead all the same. He gets up fast, his head spinning, and doesn’t tempt fate any longer than necessary to grab the bag of cans and get back to his waiting bike.

The whole way back, he’s confused. The danger has passed, and yet the thought pounds in his head along with his heartbeat: _get back home, get back home, too close, get back home._

He’s not entirely sure what home is, but he’s starting to get the idea.

When he gets back, though, she’s gone. He had almost forgotten. She’s always been there, circling quietly in his orbit, and he forgot that she hasn’t been at the prison for a few days. Rick decided she didn’t belong there. Now, Daryl remembers why he started running again.

\--

They’re holding each other now, in front of everyone. Her body shivers beneath his. They’re panting and sweating and on the verge of tears in the thick Georgia heat. He wants to speak, wants to tell her, but he doesn’t know what to say. It has to be perfect. It will have to wait.

_Nine lives, remember?_ Surely they still have a few left to spend.

\--

She looks different now, since Terminus. She’s muted, quiet, but not like when they first met back in the Atlanta camp. Just when the color was starting to return to her cheeks, it’s drained again, and she doesn’t speak. She hangs back from the group, except Tyreese, who occasionally forces her into conversation. She won’t confide in Daryl, but she acknowledges him, which is more than most of the others have done in a while. Everybody is dealing with their own shit, and it’s easy for them to forget the loner redneck. Once a drifter, always a drifter. But Carol, she looks to him, just like she used to in those early days at the prison.

They pass the long hours on the road in silence. He has nothing but his thoughts. One day, when the sun is beating down on his neck, tangling in his long, dirty hair, he remembers overhearing Glenn and Hershel talking late one night. Glenn wanted to marry Maggie, and even after Hershel gave his blessing, Glenn kept saying it, like a mantra: “I’ve known for a long time. I’ve waited too long. It’s time now. I love her. I’ve loved her for a long time.”

He looks over at Carol, heart pounding, Rick echoing in his mind: _I should’ve said it._

She glances over at him, and it takes a moment, but something about her steady gaze reassures him. He’s too tired to smile, but his heartbeat starts to slow down a little.

Carol lets her hand brush up against his, and then she’s gone again, back into her head. Daryl looks down. That’s all they’ve ever needed, that little spark of a connection, the ability to trust that the other person will always be there. _What could be better than this?_

\--

He doesn’t know why he cares so much that they lost Beth. She always used to trail after him back at the prison, wanting to be included in things, mad as hell that her older sister was learning to shoot and having adventures without her. Maybe it was because Beth said the things he was scared to admit. _You care,_ she always said, an annoying reminder. He couldn’t talk to her too long without feeling like crying. She still makes him feel like crying.

No matter how much he withdraws, Carol sees him. She can’t know it, but she’s picking up where Beth left off, living as his shadow, making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid like pick up and leave. He can’t go off on runs by himself anymore; before he knows it, there she is, saying what he can’t admit. Just like Beth. _I know you. You have to let yourself feel it._

Daryl wants to run. Run and run and run, maybe until he throws up.

\--

He doesn’t like it here. The houses all look the same, and everything is too clean. He doesn’t belong. Everything he touches gets a little bit dirtier, from the white paint on the porch to the clean utensils in the kitchen. Even Judith is clean now, with soft pink skin and fresh clothes, and he feels awkward when Rick deposits her unceremoniously into his arms.

Now he’s looking to Carol for guidance, because she seems to have all this figured out. It’s not like she fits in here either—no, she’d be a misfit like him, if she were showing her true colors. He would wager that these picket fences and casserole dishes make her just as uncomfortable as he is, just for different reasons. Rather than curl up in a corner and hide, though, she embraces it, creating a whole new identity for herself. She looks effortless. She hasn’t smiled in weeks, but now she unfurls it like a banner, taking one for the team. He sees the veneer slip now and then, when she catches him gaping at her and lets a smirk slip out of the side of her mouth, but she’s pretty airtight. Then again, he knows the truth: she was acting for years before all of this went down. She knows how to lie through her teeth.

The days pass, and she makes friends through food, securing invitations to join clubs and attend parties. H’s still sitting on Rick’s porch, trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually, her act isn’t funny anymore. He misses his friend. He’s lonely. Beth told him that it was okay to admit that. Carol told him that it was okay to feel it. But it hurts. It hurts a lot.

They’re playing a new game: should he be the first to speak, or is it her turn? But he doesn’t like this one. Turns out they’ve been playing it for a long time. No one ever actually wins.

\--

Daryl’s not playing anymore.

He doesn’t know what he’ll find when he gets back to Alexandria. All that time he spent avoiding the place, and now he’s gunning his bike down the road, the wind drowning out all other sounds from his ears. There are walkers everywhere, at least a couple for every tree in the forest that flanks the road, and there was that horn, and the people he got away from, the people who still have his crossbow. He’ll have to go back for that later.

The gates come into view. The place is a wreck. It reminds him a bit of Terminus, with all the false advertising on the billboards he passed on his way in. No sanctuary, indeed. People are yelling as he rides into town, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Rick running in his direction, but he ignores him, even when he hears his name being called.

He runs to the house he knows. It’s just like the others he’s always avoided, but now it’s like a homing beacon. He heads up the stairs, finding her in one of the bedrooms, folding clothes. She’s washed the blood off her hands and faces, burned her clothes, but it lingers in her eyes. The pain. The questions. The suggestion that she missed him more than most.

He still doesn’t feel ready, but maybe he never will.

“I should’ve said it,” he blurts.

“What?” she said slowly, and her voice quakes at the end, stumbling over the question mark. Does she want to know? More than anything, and yet not at all. _What could be better?_

“I love you,” he whispers, and he can’t remember the last time he said that word in a way that wasn’t sarcastic. Maybe it was to his mother, before she burned to a crisp and left him all alone, made him start drifting. “I’ve loved you for a long time, and I should’ve said it.”

Carol is lost for words. She lets her hands, her lips, her heart do the talking.


End file.
